At the Blue Mosque on Saturday, one of the greatest masterpieces of Ottoman
architecture, the Pope turned east towards Mecca, clasped his hands and paused
for two minutes as the Grand Mufti of Istanbul, Rahmi Yaran, delivered a Muslim
prayer.

A Pope turning towards Mecca at a time when his brethren are being "cleansed" from Muslim lands: not a good move.

This [U.S. government] "start-up" as Mr Fernandez calls it, has 23 staff members, with only two
of them working on English content.

Islamic State, on the other hand, has far more resources and is supported by
legions of volunteers who re-message its propaganda 24 hours a day - "knights of
the uploading"- it calls them.

At home the digital counter-messaging is a low priority on the list of
counter-terrorism efforts, compared to intelligence gathering, law-enforcement
or military operations.

"It's penny to the dollar compared to Tomahawks," says William McCants, a
former government official who helped set up the programme and is now a fellow
with the Brookings Institution.

Were the Obama government at all competent at crafting effective anti-ISIS messaging (and why should it be competent at that when almost everything else it does is half-assed and amateurish?), it would get far more bang for its buck from that than it does from those Tomahawks.

The law has finally caught up with Zionist writer Ezra Levant who thought he could defame Muslims without facing legal consequences. No more. Judge Wendy Matheson ruled on November 27 that Levant had defamed lawyer Khurram Awan when the latter testified before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal about Mark Steyn's Islamophobic article published in Maclean's magazine in 2006. Steyn called for Muslim genocide.

Toronto-Crescent-online
Friday November 28, 2014, 09:53 EST

Ezra Levant of Sun News Network, a rightwing media outlet, always felt he could say or write anything about anyone and get away with it. And for the most part he did because lawsuits are very expensive in Canada.

Yet a young Muslim lawyer Khurram Awan took on Levant in court for libelling him. In a series of blogs, Levant accused Awan of being a “liar,” a “jihadist,” and an “anti-Semite.”

Levant used such headings as “Awan the liar,” and “Awan the liar part two.”

The blogs related to Awan’s testimony before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal in 2008. This was based on a complaint by a group of students against Mark Steyn’s article that appeared in Maclean’s magazine in 2006.

Titled, “The future belongs to Islam,” Steyn alleged that Muslims would take over Canada because of their fast breeding habits unless “remedial steps” were taken immediately.

Steyn had first articulated these ideas in his book, America Alone, in which he alleged that “genocide” of the European population was already underway because of fast increasing Muslim population.

He applauded the Serbs’ genocide of Muslims in Bosnia and went on to suggest, “if you cannot outbreed the enemy, cull 'em.”

Calling Muslims the “enemy”, he was essentially advocating genocide of Muslims everywhere, including Canada.

And taking down my copy of America Alone from the shelf, I can find no place where Steyn uses the word "genocide" to describe the demonstrable demographic truth that Muslims in Europe are having babies at a much higher rate than non-Muslims. Nor did Steyn ever say Muslims were the "enemy" and "essentially" advocate a "genocide of Muslims everywhere, including Canada."

As for the allegation that Steyn "applauded the Serbs' genocide of Muslims in Bosnia," here's what he actually wrote (on p. 5):

Another [example of what happens when societies fail to reproduce]: why did Bosnia collapse into the worst slaughter in Europe since World War Two? In the thirty years before the meltdown, Bosnian Serbs had declined from 43 percent to 31 percent of the population, while Bosnian Muslims had increased from 26 percent to 44 percent. In a democratic age, you can't buck demography--except through civil war. The Serbs figured that out--as other Continentals will in the years ahead: if you can't outbreed the enemy, cull 'em. The problem Europe faces is that Bosnia's demographic profile is not the model for the entire continent.

So, was Steyn really applauding the Serbs' genocide when he wrote "if you can't outbreed the enemy, cull 'em"? Or was he describing--but in no way approving of--the way the Serbs looked at it, and the way other Europeans might look at it in coming years if current birth trends continue?Mark Steyn--please call your lawyer. I would love him/her to write these Khomeinists a letter threatening to take legal action because of this defamatory post.Update:America Alone is all about freedom and how easy it is to lose when we in the West submit to the sophistries of the multiculti/"diversity" cult. Hence, this observation, from the book's final chapter (p. 207):

Americans and other Westerners who want their families to enjoy the blessings of life in a free society should understand that the life we've led since 1945 in the Western world is very rare in human history. Our children are unlikely to enjoy anything so placid, and may well spend their adult years in an ugly and savage world unless we decide that who and what we are is worth defending...

In the wake of both the rot in Rotherham and ISIS-inspired attacks here in Canada, and the neo-Caliphate attracting young Westerners by the thousands to come wage jihad with them, Steyn's words aren't at all hateful. However, given that the book came out in 2006, what they are is freaking prescient.

Those are the ISIS prices for Yuzhidi chicks being sold into slavery at markets in Syria and Iraq.In answer to the obvious question--where's the world's outrage over the buying and selling of human beings?--the obvious answer is it's been hijacked/exhausted by concern over what the Joooos have done to the children of Gaza.

Dozens of protesters interrupted holiday shopping in the St. Louis area late Thursday and early Friday as part of the ongoing reaction to a grand jury's decision to not indict the Ferguson police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown this past August.

Protester Johnetta Elzie, who who had been tweeting and posting videos of the demonstrations, told the Associated Press that the group went to a Wal-Mart and Target in Brentwood, two Wal-Marts in St. Charles and one Wal-Mart in Manchester. KTVI-TV reported that in the suburbs of Maplewood and Kirkwood, several police cars and some National Guard vehicles patrolled Wal-Mart stores in case of protests.

Protesters spent a few minutes at each store, shouting inside. Officer in at least one store ordered them to leave. There was no immediate word of any arrests.

At the Manchester Wal-Mart, about two dozen people chanted "no justice, no peace, no racist police" and "no more Black Friday" after officers warned that protesters risked arrest if they didn't move at least 50 feet from the store's entrance, then began advancing in unison toward the protesters until they were moved further into the parking lot.
The mostly black group of protesters chanted in the faces of the officers -- most of whom were white -- as shoppers looked on..

The mostly black group of protesters chanted in the faces of the officers -- most of whom were white -- as shoppers looked on.

"We want to really let the world know that it is no longer business as usual," said Chenjerai Kumanyika an assistant professor at Clemson University. He added although part of the aim in disrupting Black Friday was to call attention to disagreement with the grand jury's decision and the way the case was handled, Kumanyika said it was also to highlight other forms of injustice.

"Capitalism is one of many systems of oppression," he said as the group cleared out of the parking lot...

Try living in, say, Cuba, dude. Let me know how that works out for you, oppression-wise.

Thursday, November 27, 2014

The other day I ventured that that was one of the reasons why Obama wanted to cut Chuck Hagel loose at Defense may have been because Chuck wasn't moving nearly quickly enough to release the remaining Gitmo detainees. At the time it was pure speculation, but as it turns out, I was pretty much on the mark.

Even though Turkey has a reputation as a modern country, rights activists charge that in the years since 2003, when the Islamist AKP party came into power, violence against women has skyrocketed. According to the Turkish Ministry of Justice, from 2003 until 2010, there was a 1,400 percent increase in the number of murders of women.

Blow up the kafir.His non-belief brings grief toQuite a lot of us.Let's make 'em suffer,We hate "crusaders" who invadeOur territory.For we need a little jeehad,Right this very second.Need a little jeehad,It's not what they have reckoned with.They'll bleed because of jeehadRight this very second.Their airplanes bombing our locationsHaven't caused us palpitations.Obama's a weakling.He's in no rush to crush usOr our caliphate.And, strictly speaking,We know that we have got the Will to kill and prevail.For we've grown a little stronger,Grown a little older.Know we're lasting longer--Longer 'cuz we're bolder.And we need you to be stupid--"Diversity" and "outreach."Need a little jeehad now!...

In today's NatPo, an RCMP official from British Columbia named Wayne Rideout, 'splains a critical component of the Mounties' "multi-layered anti-terrorism strategy" that aims to "keep Canadians safe" (link not yet available online):

Still, we can't effectively counter the threat of radicalization leading to violence through detection and disruption alone. This is why community engagement is so important. We are enhancing the long-standing relationships we have with Canadian communities and families, including diverse ethnic, cultural and religious communities. Which is why B.C. groups like the RCMP's Cultural Diversity Advisory Committee are so important to our collective efforts.

Our collective goal should be to prevent our youth and our citizens from engaging in violent extremism...

Mark Steyn calls me "the great Scaramouche" here.In another part of his post, Steyn mentions that disgraced Ceeb celeb Jian Ghomeshi

surrendered to Toronto Police and was charged with four counts of sexual violence plus one of choking someone in order to "overcome resistance". The last is serious business: if convicted, Ghomeshi could go to prison for life. As for the "sexual violence", what strikes me about the various accounts from his "girlfriends" is that his sexual violence is heavy on the violence, rather light on the sexual - if there's any at all: at least one paramour dated him for a year without any sex. His initial get-ahead-of-the-story statement and, indeed, his own lawyer in a lighthearted jest at a speaking engagement suggested the violence was just "foreplay". But au contraire Ghomeshi seems to be less interested in sex than in just beating women up for the sheer pleasure of it.

Indeed. As I have previously remarked, he seemed to be using a category of sexual behavior--B&D&S&M--to justify what boiled down to a penchant (allegedly) for A&B (assault and battery), which is criminal, not sexual. (Given Ghomeshi's obvious desire to justify his proclivities, the appearance of the Shades of Grey trilogy a few years back must have seemed like a godsend.)As if his Icarus-like fall wasn't humiliating enough, Jian has been subjected to what, for him, must be the ultimate indignity: In order to get out on bail, he had to agree to live with his Mom. (Presumably, Mama G. is far less likely to turn a blind eye to Jian's dubious dating antics than was his beloved stuffie and wingman, Big Ears Teddy.)

Tarek Fatah, who appeared before the Senate Standing Committee on National Security and Defence the other day, recounts the sorry story of how the RCMP is being duped:

I suggested to the senators that some Islamic clerics are taking us for a ride. For example, a Canadian cleric, a white convert to Islam who is touted as a ‘de-radicalization counsellor’ by the RCMP, was last week in the Gulf Emirate of Qatar, holding meetings with the leadership of the Taliban.

On his Facebook page, this RCMP de-radicalization counsellor wrote:

“I am meeting with the head of the Taliban Embassy in Doha, Qatar and we are working on a treaty that would state clearly that the Taliban (Mujahideen) don’t condone vigilante violence, criminal acts or terrorism in non-Muslim countries.”

De-radicalization, I told the senators, was just an empty meaningless word. The real challenge was to prevent radicalization and this required confronting the rhetoric of political Islam rather than appeasing those who fanned religiosity and made Muslims believe their first loyalty was to Islam, not their community of fellow Canadians and Canada.

“To ask ‘former radicals’ to de-radicalize radical Islamists is like asking Marxists to convert Communists into liberal democrats,” I told the committee.

FYI, here's the "de-radicalizer's" Facebook entry.Also, I would suggest that the real real challenge is to come to terms with the fact that "political Islam" and Islam are one and the same, something, alas, which Mr. Fatah seems loath to do.

When it comes to Zionhass, there's no diff between UNRWA and Hamas. That being so, now is the time to acknowledge that UNRWA's jihadi aspirations mimic those it purports to serve, and stop funding a racket that foments Jew-hate and that aims to replace the Jewish state with an Islamist one.

I'm sure you have noticed that, while the vast majority of African-Americans/Muslims are killed by other African-American/Muslims, African-Americans/Muslims and the squish-brained media care only about that much smaller portion of African-Americans/Muslims who are killed by white people/Israelis. In other words, a victim mentality pervades both grievance groups, a state of affairs that allows them to evade all responsibility for their actions and blame their sorry fate entirely on the "racist" other. And the leftist media, pervaded as it is by leftist guilt and adoration of the designated underdog (the eternal "victim" of America/Israel), purveys this faulty narrative, one that helps keep the "victim" locked--frozen--in a state of victimhood that can only be assuaged by occasional eruptions of mob anger/violence/an intifada. In light of that reality, this photo taken the other night in downtown Seattle makes perfect sense:
﻿

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

90 percent of Dutch Turks ages 18-35 consider the Islamic State (IS or ISIS) members heroes, and enthusiastically support their friends and neighbors who travel to Syria to join them. And 48 percent of Holland's 18-35-year-old Moroccan immigrants agree.

This one is by way of apology to a man who at first seemed befuddled, unfocussed and seriously out of his depth, but who--whadya know?--turned out to have a spine (such a rarity in the White House that it deserves to be acknowledged--and applauded):A Defense Secretary named ChuckManifested a great deal of pluck.Said Obama to Chuck,"Man, your pluck sucks!"And now poor Chuck's plum out of luck.

"In the past two weeks, the Department of Defense has transferred seven detainees. These transfers include both the first Yemenis since 2010 and two transfers involving detainees made eligible by the Periodic Review Board process.

A total of 13 detainees have been transferred this year. This strikes a responsible balance and reflects the careful deliberation the Secretary of Defense brings to the transfer process, and follows a rigorous process in the interagency to review several items including security review prior to any transfer," said Mr. Paul Lewis, Special Envoy for Guantanamo Detention Closure In accordance with statutory requirements, the secretary of defense informed Congress of the United States' intent to transfer this individual and of his determination that this transfer meets the statutory standard. The Periodic Review Board process was established by the president's March 7, 2011 Executive Order (EO) 13567.

The United States is grateful to the Government of Saudi Arabia for its willingness to support ongoing U.S. efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The United States coordinated with the Government of Saudi Arabia to ensure this transfer took place consistent with appropriate security and humane treatment measures.

Today, 142 detainees remain at Guantanamo Bay.

My question: was this one reason Hagel was pushed out--because his release of Gitmo prisoners was too laggardly for an Oval Office that has been itching to close the joint a.s.a.p.?Update: No wonder Hagel was unceremoniously shown the door. His propensity for telling the truth made him a total misfit in President Pinocchio's White House:

Departing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel may have sealed his exit in this interview with Charlie Rose last week. Rose conducted the interview at the Pentagon.
In the interview, Hagel made two key points that serve as accusations that President Barack Obama is mismanaging the United States military and the ISIS threat.

Rose asked Hagel to elaborate on comments that he made in a speech at the Reagan Library last weekend. In that speech, Hagel said that America’s military capability, while still the best in the world, is being threatened.

Hagel re-iterated that to Rose, but also left viewers to wonder about the direction that President Obama is taking the military.

“I am worried about it, I am concerned about it, Chairman Dempsey is, the chiefs are, every leader of this institution,” Hagel said, including Pentagon leadership but leaving both President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden’s names out of his list of officials who are worried about the U.S. military’s declining capability. Hagel said that the Congress and the American people need to know what while the U.S. military remains the strongest, best trained and most motivated in the world, its lead is being threatened because of policies being implemented now.

Hagel went on to note that a good leader prepares their institution for future success, saying that “the main responsibility of any leader is to prepare your institution for the future. If you don’t do that, you’ve failed. I don’t care how good you are, how smart you are, any part of your job. If you don’t prepare your institution, you’ve failed.”

This is one of the few occasions where top Muslim Shiite and Sunni clerics and scholars from across the world are seen under one roof to exchange views on a subject which has turned into the biggest challenge for the world of Islam next to the issue of Palestine. The increase of horrific crimes against ordinary Muslims by groups such as al-Qaeda and the ISIL in the name of Islam has now turned into an alarm signal for these scholars that are here to draw a clear separation line between Islam and Terrorism.

The event is titled the world congress on extremism and Tekfiri movements in the Islamic scholars’ view. Jointly organized by two of Iran’s prominent religious clerics Grand Ayatollah’s Makarem Shirazi and Grand Ayatollah Sobhani the congress is centered on the role of top Muslim clerics or Ulama, in uniting the Islamic world against Tekfiri terrorists. Some scholars believe that barbaric acts of decapitating prisoners by groups like the ISIL are an Israeli project aimed at diverting the public opinion towards the suppression of Palestinians by Israeli.

Canadian society acknowledges ethnicity as part of our Canadian identity. This uniquely Canadian idea has now become distorted for many newcomers. What was intended as a way to celebrate our differences as part of being Canadian has been muddied by permitting others, including religious orders in distant lands, to dictate how one must act, dress, eat and vote.

Celebration of our diversity has turned into a policy allowing for divisions. Forced and arranged marriages, honour killings and teaching of hate towards other religions or toward homosexuals, or death warrants against apostates are the result of the lack of discussion and understanding of the intent of a pluralistic society.

"Honour killings"? Preaching hate re non-believers and homosexuals? The death sentence for "apostasy"? So far, so Islamist, no?Lest you draw that obvious conclusion, however, Rouhani immediately backtracks--and goes completely awry:

Violence by any group misusing the policies designed to bring closer together Canadians of different ethnicities is unacceptable. While now there seems to be a lot of focus on Muslims, they are not the only group producing violent extremists and they do not have a monopoly on terrorism. Blame should, therefore, not be placed exclusively on extremists in any single ethnic or religious group...

You don't say. In that case, "Damn those Buddhists/Wiccans/Seventh Day Adventists! Them and their violent, supremacist jihad!," should make a lot more sense than it does.

The third and longest section concerns the place of the BDS movement on the left. In a political atmosphere in which Zionism is routinely treated a a right wing phenomenon, it is refreshing to see people like Alan Johnson, a member of the editorial board of Dissent, turn the tables on anti-Zionism, a species of what he calls “reactionary anti-imperialism.” Anti-Zionist ideology reduces “the complexity of the post cold-war world to a single great contest—“Imperialism” against “the resistance.”” According to this Manichean view, adopted by “many on the left,” Israel, whatever its virtues, cannot be forgiven for being allied with the West. More strikingly, Islamist movements, whatever their vices, can be embraced by the left so long as they oppose Israel and the West. That is how Judith Butler came to describe the “eliminationist antisemites of Hamas and Hezbollah” as “social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left.”To manage this almost unbelievable feat, Butler and others on her side are compelled resolutely to avoid any recognition that Israel has legitimate security concerns, that it is anything other than a settler state akin in motivation and power to the British Empire, that anyone other than Israel is responsible for ongoing violence in the Middle East, and that there is such a thing as Arab and Palestinian antisemitism that cannot be understood as an understandable reaction to Israeli aggression. Johnson is one of several essayists prepared to risk the charge of right-wingism and Islamophobia to save the left from doing on a large scale what the ASA has done on a small scale, namely embracing an illiberal, perhaps anti-Semitic, doctrine that can thrive only by trading the pursuit of the truth for the repetition of slogans.

I'd go even further and say that Zionhass represents a wholesale rejection of the truth, and, terrifyingly, a detour/descent into the hellish cul de sac that gave rise to the Holocaust.

Over time, I became more confident as a writer, yet also less confident as a conservative. The failure of the 2003 Iraq campaign made me realize that a lot of the Bush-administration cheerleading I’d done was based on an act of psychological projection: Since I enjoy living in a society anchored in the Western values of individualism, democracy, the rule of law, and ethno-religious pluralism, I assumed that this was a universal human aspiration. Turns out I was wrong, at least in the short term, and I said so in a 2006 column entitled “Confessions of a misguided hawk.”

That column made me persona non grata among conservative true believers. But it felt good to write it — and I’m glad I did. I quit law to become a writer because I wanted to speak my mind, not join an ideological or political tribe. Since then, I’ve dissented from so many right-wing positions — on global warming; gay marriage; and even, on occasion, Israel — that I’m not even sure where I’d peg myself on the left-right spectrum these days. Certainly, the 2008 financial crisis destroyed my one-time faith in unregulated capitalism. I started to write about income inequality, and even helped edit Justin Trudeau’s memoir. Yes, I still have it in me to horrify a bien-pensant Toronto dinner party with my views on GMOs or abortion. But ask, say, Terry Corcoran or Ezra Levant if they think I’m any sort of real conservative, and they’ll just start laughing.

The cynic in me says that Kay is an opportunist who has moved from right to left because, frankly, there's a lot more work and popularity to be had (as well as bien-pensant dinner parties to attend) on that end of things. But, hey, he has mouths to feed and kids to put through school, so a man's gotta do, etc. That doesn't mean, though, that he has to justify his leftward drift move to the left by lambasting many on the right as ideologues and members of an inflexible tribe. As if the those on the left don't hew to their own unexamined orthodoxies, their own tribal mishegas. (Also, pace Kay, there's far more to conservatism than a belief in unfettered capitalism. For one thing, there's a distaste for "big government" and its statist intrusions into one's life, including its desire to regulate--and put the kibosh on--our free speech.)

Me? I miss the old Jon Kay. The one who, when unfairly characterized as a bigot and a racist at a "Combating Hatred" conference some years ago (a time that predates the point when I saw his thinking really start to change, i.e. when he wrote his "troofer" book) spoke off the cuff so brilliantly. That Jonathan Kay was impressive--thrilling, even--as he defended Canada and himself from the charge that it is riddled with racism and hatefulness (the bleat of most of the conference's speakers and its organizer, Karen Mock; following Kay's speech, Mock took it upon herself to lay into Kay for daring to mock--sorry--the holy confab). So taken was I with Kay's performance that I emailed him afterwards to commend him for his bravery and quick-wittedness. I believe I said something to the effect that, had angry conference attendees thought to bring tar and feathers, he would have been going home black and fluffy--and I meant it as the highest compliment.Sadly, I haven't much use for the new Jon, the one who likes to "misbehave" at elitist dinner parties; the one who left the Post to edit The Walrus, a smug, self-satisfied, anti-Israel magazine for the Justin Trudeau-adoring dinner party set and, up till now, a real snoozeroo. Can Kay turn it into something else, something a mal-pensant like moi would want to read? Oh, sure, maybe he'll throw in an "off the reservation" article now and then, to pat himself on the back for being such an independent thinker, and to give himself the same pleasurable frisson he gets from shocking dinner-party attendees with his abortion and GMO repartee. But since these days he's much more at home with the "right-thinkers" on/of the left, I don't expect to become a Walrus reader any time soon--or ever.

I'm getting weary of the monarchical comparisons, which are a bit of an insult to real monarchs. The Obama model seems to owe more to Judge Dredd, the popular comic-book figure with the power to arrest, convict, sentence and execute as he does what's necessary to bring hope and change to a dystopian megalopolis. Likewise, President Dredd: "He is the Law, and you'd better believe it!" A contempt for the people and for constitutional and legal restraints is what ties the President's actions on Thursday night to Eric Holder's corrupt justice department to Lois Lerner's corrupt revenue agency to Jonathan Gruber's corrupt health commissariat (merely to skim the surface of the most recent additions to the unending Obama-scandals document dump).

To express common-or-garden contempt for the will of the people, Obama could have simply repealed another handful of inconvenient paragraphs from Obamacare or made Lois Lerner Attorney-General, but the form of contempt he chose is especially exquisite: "legalizing" millions of foreign law-breakers and setting them on the path to US citizenship. The chief of state has heard the voice of the people and his message to them is: "Yeah, whatever, I can always get another people. Hey, here comes five million or so right now, plus another ten million in chain-migration relatives down the road..."

To paraphrase a line from a 60s song: American voters fought the Law and the Law won.

We’ve endured six years of “If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan,” “How dare you call Obamacare a tax,” “The video did it in Benghazi,” “Of course we’d never let guns walk to Mexican gangs,” “Workplace violence,” “Kinetic military action,” “The IRS harassment is outrageous and intolerable,” and “not a smidgeon of corruption” from “the most transparent administration in history.” Yet what so astonished the commentariat about Obama’s decree of amnesty for illegal aliens was the sheer audacity of hoax.

“I’m the president of the United States, not the emperor of the United States,” our would-be emperor repeatedly explained in the months and years before Thursday’s edict. Again and again, in more than two dozen recorded public statements, the president emphatically denied that he had the power to pronounce law unilaterally. “My job,” he huffed, “is to execute the laws that are passed.” His mere say-so could not suspend deportations or grant illegal aliens lawful status, he explained, because that would transgress “laws on the books that Congress has passed.”

In fact, nearly two years ago, Obama said he and his subordinates had already “stretched our administrative flexibility as much as we can” for the benefit of unlawful immigrants. Yet this week, he abruptly discovered enough elasticity to dictate a new legal regime — actually, an illegal regime — for conferring lawful status on illegal aliens, a power our quaint Constitution vests in Congress.

In Thursday’s speech, Obama was not just brazen but remorseless, not deigning to offer a word of explanation for his sudden 180. Another day, another story line in the soap opera, as if the prior episodes had never happened.

Somewhere down in Hades, Saul is shepping naches over his progeny's chutzpah.

Following this week's synagogue bloodshed, President Obama said that "obviously, we condemn [the attack] in the strongest terms." At the same time, however, he called upon "Israeli and Palestinian leaders and ordinary citizens to work cooperatively together to lower tensions, reject violence, and seek a path forward towards peace."

"Too many Israelis have died. Too many Palestinians have died," he concluded (evenhandedly, of course).Daniel Greenfield explains why the "path forward" will remain forever blocked:

A thousand foreign policy experts are dug out, suited up and marched into studios to explain what specific set of un-Islamic Muslim grievances caused this latest beheading and how the surviving non-Muslims need to appease their future killers. And then another tree falls. And another head rolls.

The appeasement never works. No non-Muslim country has ever reliably made peace with Muslim terrorists inside its own borders. Even the Muslim countries have a shaky track record. Most have settled for either massacring them, like Algeria and Jordan, or secretly allying with them, like just about every Muslim country from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia.

And yet Nigeria is expected to cut a deal with the Boko Haram rapists of its little girls, Israel is expected to negotiate with the mass murderers of its Rabbis, Hindus in India are expected to negotiate with the Jihadists who burn them alive and somehow arrive at a peaceful settlement. And if the peace doesn’t come, then it won’t be the fault of the rapists, the axe-wielders and arsonists, but of their victims.

It is never the Muslim terrorists who are at fault for not being appeased by any compromise and any concession. It is the fault of their victims for not appeasing them hard enough.

Compromise with Muslim terrorists is impossible because the issue is not really about Jerusalem, oil revenues in Nigeria, Kashmir or Syria. It’s always about Islam. The territorial claims are unlimited and uncompromisable because they are backed by Islam. No concession can ever suffice because Islam promises its followers not merely some land in Syria, Israel or India… but the entire world.

There's a term for "the desire to dominate the entire world." You'll find it in the above headline.

In the face of unspeakable depravity, the British respond with impeccable even-handedness. After pious expressions of horror over the carnage in Jerusalem this morning, where four rabbis were slaughtered during morning prayers and several o...thers badly injured by Arabs screaming “Allahu akhbar”, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond and his Labour shadow Douglas Alexander called on “both sides” to “de-escalate” tensions.

“Both sides”, eh. How exactly do those who are being targeted for mass murder in a never-ending terror war “de-escalate”? The inescapable suggestion is that the Israelis have escalated these tensions in an equivalent manner to the Arabs.

This morning’s BBC reports of the atrocity went one stage further, blaming it on the “old dispute” over who gets to pray on Temple Mount and the recent tensions arising from the renewed Jewish campaign to do so. So the slaughter of Jews was all the Jews’ fault.

This was a grotesque, indeed obscene distortion. There was never the slightest chance of this forlorn campaign to allow Jews to pray on Temple Mount getting anywhere with the Israeli government. Israel didn’t escalate anything at all. On the contrary, the violence was initiated by the Arabs as they lit the petrol trail of lies and incitement.

This process was kicked off by Mahmoud Abbas when, at the UN a couple of months ago, he promulgated the demonstrable and ludicrous falsehood that Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinians. Last month, he fanned the flames of conflagration by claiming entirely falsely that Jewish “settlers” were planning to desecrate the al Aqsa mosque, and calling for them to be prevented.

Falsely he claimed that there were “many attacks on al Aqsa repulsed by religious leaders”. But there were no such Israeli attacks. Instead, Arabs lured the Israeli police into the complex by throwing rocks and shooting fireworks towards police officers stationed near the entrance to the Temple Mount area from the Western Wall plaza. The police chased the rioters who ran inside al Aqsa, which had been turned into an ammunition store. From there, pitched battles were fought with Israeli police, firing small rockets at them and hurling stones and other projectiles.

But the BBC didn’t mention any of this today. Instead, it blamed the victims and thus excused their attackers...

Nope. Because the con wasn't perpetrated by wicked, trickydicky-Bushitler Republicans, all the lying, conniving and chicanery will pay off (because the media will feel free to ignore it), and ObamaCare will forever remain the crappy law of the land.In homage to that reality, everybody sing!:Grubered.Got grubered, got conned by Obama.You're grubered.Grubered because you were "dumb."They knew you'd love O as long as he neededAnd that one dayObamaCare'd finally come.Stupid,Gruber kept calling you stupid.Knowin'How eas'ly his scam would slip through.Oh, gruberedFor thinking that O's the messiah.So Gruber got lyin',And Gruber got flyin',Now you're gruberedAnd thoroughly screwed...

He's retiring after many years, so he can say this stuff without fear of an employer backlash:

“CBC is now sustained in the trenches by a whole lot of new recruits who are enthusiastic and ambitious and gifted, and who desperately want to get a foothold in media. And desperation and vulnerability will go together, and then if you put that in a place where there is an influence driven by ego, narcissism, a kind of abusive personality, you start moving along a continuum. It starts with just a sort of obnoxious, ‘Run down and get me a coffee.’” Unchecked, he says, “It moves into a sense of entitlement that allows you to make greater demands and be a bigger bully.”

And even through MacIntyre spent decades on TV, he says he never lost the sense he had cultivated during his first 12 years in the business, as a lowly print reporter for a regional paper. “There was no horseshit there, boy,” he says with a chuckle. “Entitlement wouldn’t get you a cup of tea.

“The problem with the culture is that it nurtures that kind of celebrity, and it nurtures that kind of entitlement, because stardom tends to put a rosy glow over the whole institution, and makes the managers who cultivate the stardom look competent, and effective. And it makes them a little bit starry, too,” MacIntyre says. “So the Ghomeshi thing was always a problem. Because Ghomeshi has always been arrogant, he’s always been obnoxious – in the sort of the passive way, where he’s always been so vulnerable: ‘You can’t hurt Jian,’ even though he hurts other people. And his tantrums and his workplace relationships: ‘Well, he’s very rigorous, he’s a perfectionist, you know?’ So he is allowed to bully and abuse people. You know, that’s the way it works, that’s what you put up with, whether it’s Mansbridge, Gzowski, whatever. They were not like shrinking violets, either. So along comes Ghomeshi: ‘Oh, yeah, he’s in the tradition of that. But somewhere along the way, it crosses a line. It does cross a line.”

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Scaramouche is my nom de Web. My real name is Mindy G. Alter, and I like to think of myself as a free speecher with a sense of humour. My bailiwick: fighting on behalf of all the good things that free speech helps safeguard, and doing my utmost to highlight the malevolence and imbicilities of those who oppose freedom, whomever they may be.